New Apartment Buildings and a Clubhouse area being Constructed

Over the last month or so, we’ve been working extensively at Blue Ridge, for Triple Crown Corporation. New apartment buildings and a clubhouse area are currently being constructed. Our first priority was building a few sets of retaining walls and planter boxes around the clubhouse building. The first wall was to be constructed in the front of a pool house building, on both sides of the concrete steps that enter the front of the building. We started by finding our sub grade, and began excavating. The wall on the left side of the steps was approximately 35 linear feet. Once we had all the dirt removed, we could then begin to install our 6-inch stone base for the retaining wall. For our stone base, we used 2a modified. After we had our 6 inches of stone, we plate tamped our base and rechecked the stone grade and made minor adjustments. The next step was to begin laying our first course with about an inch of stone dust. The first course of the wall is the most important and time consuming, because each block has to be perfectly level. This course is the foundation for the remaining courses. After we had the first course set to our liking, we could now fill the blocks and the backside with our 2a modified. Following this, we ran a smaller plate tamper on the backside of the wall to ensure the proper compaction. In total, this wall ended up being four courses high, except for the far side that had about an eight-foot section that was five courses. For the finishing touches on this wall, we had to cut and glue caps for the wall block. The other side of the concrete steps was closer to 60 linear feet. On this side we were able to taper the wall down due to the grading plans. Using the same process, we constructed four different planter boxes using the block. Below are a few pictures of the walls in progress.